Affiliate marketing is the shortcut to success you might have been waiting for

When you’re involved with affiliate marketing and you want to start your own business, you’ll have the opportunity of earning commissions without doing any real work — just selling products or services provided by other companies.

Unless your business really takes off and becomes lucrative, you probably won’t earn enough money to be completely self-sustaining.

However, affiliate marketing can be a great way to supplement your income right from home.

There are a wealth of such opportunities available right now, even with companies that are well known throughout the US.

Here’s what you need to know about establishing your own affiliate marketing business.

1. Sell products you’re familiar with

At the beginning of your affiliate marketing career, you should stick to selling products which you know fairly well — a reflection of your present interests or current occupation.

The reason for this is that you will almost always do a much better job when you already have a working knowledge of those products you’re trying to sell.

2. Create a website which caters to your niche

When you’re trying to get established with specific companies as an affiliate, they will want to know the website you are going to be using to sell their products.

This is very natural because any company affiliating itself with independent entrepreneurs is going to want to know that these websites will not damage their reputation.

It will be very easy for you to set up your own website, especially if you use one of the most popular content management services like WordPress.

As you’re building your website, make sure to include content which is not dominated by sales pitches.

Instead, what you should aim for is to present yourself as an authority in your particular market, so that potential customers will want to come to you for relevant and useful information.

3. Cost of creating a website

When considering the cost of a new website, a number of factors come into play.

These include the number of pages you’ll have on your website and the kind of content that you’re going to post on the site.

A study conducted on 400 of the top freelancer profiles on UpWork came up with some ballpark numbers which can be used as a guideline for someone who intends to become involved with the affiliate marketing business.

A 10-page website will cost somewhere between US$200 and US$1500 for its initial setup, and then there will probably be some modification costs afterwards.

If you want to include some custom site designs rather than using a WordPress template for instance, the range you might expect to pay would be from US$1,500 to US$5,000.

Also Read: 5 effective tricks to boost your SEO

If you were to further enhance that website with custom designs and custom functions, a 10-page website might cost anywhere between US$5,000 and US$10,000 for its initial set up, along with periodic additional investments for marketing and development.

If you are a newcomer to affiliate marketing, you’re probably going to want to stick to the low side of website costs, and keep your investment somewhere near the US$200 range, which is entirely possible when you use a WordPress template as a framework for your site.

4. How to become an affiliate

As mentioned above, you should probably start by researching affiliate programs which offer products that you’re familiar with, and that you can comfortably pitch to potential customers.

One good place to start is on Amazon because the site sells just about everything, so whatever you’re looking to become involved with, there’s a good chance that there’s an affiliate marketing potential at Amazon.

One other great option is a company called Commission Junction, which will help you to become an affiliate for a huge number of successful companies that you’ve probably already heard about (Office Depot, Overstock, and a great deal more).

Clickbank is one other option that is worth researching, and which many affiliate marketers have become very successful.

Commissions earned from companies associated with Clickbank have been very profitable in the past, and are likely to be just as lucrative in the future.

5. Join your chosen affiliate program

Generally speaking, there is no charge associated with becoming an affiliate in any specific program.

That means you should be wary of any company which asks you for your credit card number when you’re trying to join an affiliate program, because you may be getting scammed.

Virtually, all reputable companies which provide opportunities for affiliates, allow entrepreneurs to affiliate with their companies for no charge.

You are likely to be asked for a PayPal account number or a bank account number, but that’s not because the company wants to extract money from you. They will need an account number to deposit your commissions in, once you start becoming successful.

You may also be asked for the URL of the website you created for your affiliate marketing business, and this is quite normal as well.

6. Include affiliate links inside your content

One great way to boost your commissions without even having to make a sales pitch is to include affiliate links within the content on your site.

Also Read: Digitised school tuition startup InfraDigital raises seed funding from Fenox Ventures

Whenever site visitors click on any of those links, they will be taken to the company site, and if they make a purchase there, a commission will accrue to you for your efforts.

Most companies make it very easy for you to acquire links to their websites. The method that you acquire these links may vary from one company to the next, but it’s almost always very easy to link to any products you’re looking for.

7. Keep producing relevant content

If you want people to continue to come back to your website, you need to continue producing relevant and useful content for your users.

The more users are encouraged to come back to your site, the better the chances are that they’ll click on affiliate links and make a purchase, which in turn earns you a commission.

By producing a steady stream of content which interests your readers, you’ll encourage more visitors to your site.

Eventually, the sheer weight of numbers should operate in your favour, and a number of these visitors would be clicking on affiliate links to make purchases — while you earn profits.

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Image Credits: bryljaev

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Its other human-less tech includes self-operating trucks, automated warehouses and unmanned stores

JD.com’s drones take flight to Japan in partnership with Rakuten [TechCrunch]

Chinese e-commerce company JD.com is taking its drone delivery system to Japan.

Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce giant, just announced a partnership with JD that will see its drones and unmanned vehicles become a part of Rakuten’s own unmanned delivery service efforts.

JD has been operating drones in its native China for a number of years, and it has wider expansion plans having recently gained a regional-level operating license. Its other human-less tech includes self-operating trucks, automated warehouses and unmanned stores, and it recently picked Indonesia for its first overseas drone pilot.

Woowa Brothers becomes ‘unicorn’ after raising US$320M [The Investor]

Woowa Brothers, the operator of Korea’s leading food delivery platform Baedal Minjok, announced on Dec. 21 that it has secured additional investments of US$320 million from global investors, making it the latest Korean “unicorn” — startups with an enterprise value of over US$1 billion.

The investments were led by its current investor private equity firm Hillhouse Capital, with equity participation by US-based Sequoia Capital and GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, the company said.

Tencent to maintain aggressive investment stance in face of challenging 2019 [Channel News Asia]

Tencent Holdings said investment is central to its overall strategy and so it will maintain its scale of investment after an aggressive 2018, brushing aside near-term risks such as the bursting of China’s tech bubble as economic growth slows.

In the first detailed review of investment performance, President Martin Lau also said 2018 was Tencent’s best year as a record 16 portfolio companies went public, and that it had invested in more than 700 companies over the past 11 years.

The comments come as Tencent battles investor concerns of slowing growth in the video game and social media giant’s core businesses as the government increases scrutiny of online content and services.

Sachin Bansal plans to foray into financial services [The Economic Times]

Sachin Bansal, who co-founded Flipkart, a startup that grew into an e-commerce powerhouse, is venturing into the Indian financial services sector, which has drawn investments from the likes of Chinese billionaire Jack Ma’s Alibaba to Japanese investment powerhouse SoftBank.

The billionaire has been in discussions with financial experts on the potential to launch a new venture in a sector that is being transformed by fast-paced technological change, said two people in the know of the matter.

HyperXchange to launch drones-based doorstep delivery in refurbishing industry [press release]

HyperXchange, a refurbished electronics brand in India, is testing a drone-based delivery network in India. The testing process is happening in Kolkata and the drone-based doorstep delivery of mobile phones will be provided in cities like Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune , Bangalore etc near HyperXchange’s warehouses.

The company has partnered with AeroNext, a manufacturer of super-loaded drones, in order to reduce product delivery time by 75 per cent.

Drones will be the future of intracity and intercity medium for logistics and transport.

In the intracity segment, the delivery guys will collect the couriers (be it Amazon or Swiggy) from a drone station nearby the locality, thereby saving time and labour.

“We are currently evaluating the pros and cons of bringing this new age technology. The drone-based delivery pilot is meant to be an initial foray towards building an automated last-mile order delivery process — right till the customer’s doorstep,” HyperXchange Co-founder and CEO Dipanjan Purkayastha said.

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Both Singapore-based companies have joined on a mission to make sure patients can get personalised healthcare at lower cost

Digital healthcare platform MyDoc today announced a partnership with Homage, a personalised nursing service provider.

The partnership will result in nursing care integration into MyDoc with the goal of offering affordable and enhanced outpatient healthcare support for employers and insurers.

According to MyDoc, the partnership rings true to its strategy which includes simplifying healthcare to be able to catch chronic diseases before it reaches terminal stage. This is also something that Singapore’s Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat addressed during Budget 2019 in terms of cost-effectiveness and access to the general population suffering from chronic conditions, regardless of income.

Also Read: Digitised school tuition startup InfraDigital raises seed funding from Fenox Ventures

Using MyDoc, patients can have a personal professional healthcare service with capabilities to enhance the patient experience and steer patients onto effective personal care pipeline that help each individual get well, stay well, and out of hospitals.

The partnership will see through two patient care models, that include expanding onsite clinics staffed by nurses who are supported by remote doctors, and a Clinic Care Capabilities that’ll enable patient to follow up care at home and better distribution of patient load.

Patients can use MyDoc’s platform to contact their nurses, provided by Homage and trained and certified by MyDoc. These telenurses are to monitor patient oxygen levels, heart rate, respiration, blood glucose level, and more.

On the other hand, nurses will be able to launch teleconsults with doctors from patients’ homes or offices to provide comprehensive doctor and nurse care, all at an affordable cost for each onsite visit and consult.

“Adding nurses to the MyDoc CARE team is a natural step in our strategy to enhance our patient-centric primary care continuum. Nursing care at home would be a significant value add to patients who need post-hospital discharge follow up services like wound reviews, dressing changes, intravenous therapies, and vital monitoring,” said Dr. Vas Metupalle, CIO and co-founder of MyDoc.

As the country of an estimated one million aged people by population by 2030, Singapore must tackle challenges of the high costs of care, especially home care.

“At Homage, we are professionalising home caregiving in Singapore by ensuring that all of our nurses possess the right certification and training,” said Gillian Tee, CEO and founder of Homage.

Also Read: Lalamove raises US$300M in Series D funding round to widen expansion

Homage is the most recent addition to MyDoc’s value-based digital healthcare platform. Other strategic partners in the region include Guardian, IHP, Acumed, Aetna, AIA Vitality, Cigna, and many others.
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The move appears to be the first step in what will full-scale launch in Indonesia

Binance, a global cryptocurrency exchange, announced today it has launched its Academy product in Indonesia. The move appears to be the first step towards a more significant foray into the country.

Binance is the world’s largest exchange by volume, and a launch in Indonesia would provide Binance with access to one of the world’s most important emerging markets and a country with a solid blockchain scene.

Academy is a free-to-use platform that aims to educate people about the cryptocurrency industry. The hope is that by educating the market, people will be able to participate in the crypto space from a position of strength.

Binance Academy has 726 articles on its platform and plans to launch in Indonesia with around 80 articles in Bahasa Indonesia. A quick tour of the website shows articles about Blockchain use-cases, explainers on topics like ‘coin burn’ and basic principles about security.

As part of the launch, Academy is leveraging Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages project to drive a mobile-first product.

Also Read: Zilingo CEO Ankiti Bose on failures, challenges, handling depression and more

Not only is Indonesia a mobile-first nation, experts think that more citizens have investments in cryptocurrencies than the national stock market.

“Binance Academy’s expansion to offer Indonesian content reaffirms Binance’s strong commitment to advancing crypto education through quality, unbiased knowledge sharing that is freely accessible to all. Indonesia is a key emerging market globally with more than 260M people,”said Ted Lin, Binance Head of Growth.

“The potential for cryptocurrency adoption and appetite for blockchain related knowledge is burgeoning, with the number cryptocurrency holders estimated to be rivaling that of stock holders locally. Binance remains committed to driving crypto adoption, accessibility, and financial inclusivity for everyone around the world,” he added.

Binance was also in the news yesterday for the launch of a decentralised trading platform built atop its blockchain network. It is called DEX and it allows people to create their own individual wallets with private keys and personal nodes.

It has also been reported that Binance made US$446 million in profits in 2018, a remarkable number for a company that is only about 18 months old.

Also Read: Lalamove raises US$300M in Series D funding round to widen expansion

Binance has its official headquarters in Malta but had a significant presence in Singapore and received investment from Vertex Ventures.

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Punch your way through the startup community by giving your startup idea its much needed spotlight at the Echelon Roadshow 2019 Manila

When it comes to brilliant startup ideas, you need to be surrounded by the right people in order to truly launch your vision.

This is why as we inch closer to the Echelon Asia Summit this coming May, what better way to start your Echelon experience than by doing just that: surrounding yourself with other startup founders, potential partners, prospect investors, and more?

In order to warm Filipino startup founders up before the Echelon Asia Summit, we’re bringing the Echelon experience sooner and closer through the Echelon Roadshow 2019 Manila!

At the roadshow event, startup founders don’t only get to listen to some of the best and the brightest in the startup ecosystem as they share key business insights. You also get to immerse in the startup community, opening up opportunities to meet the right people who can help scale your startup business to greater heights!

More importantly, the event will be the perfect chance for you to WOW people with your brilliant startup idea—hopefully leading to better opportunities for your startup in the future!

Not only do you get to put your startup under the spotlight, but you can also catch your country’s reps to the TOP 100 and see how they’re concocting their success—all under the pristine tropical sun of the lush archipelago. It’s truly more fun in the Philippines!

Also Read: Tweet about your #startuplyfe and win tickets to Echelon Asia Summit 2019!

The Echelon Roadshow 2019 Manila is part of a series of international stops leading up to the annual Echelon Asia Summit happening in May. It is happening on 21 March, 2019, from 5pm to 9pm at the WeWork Uptown Bonifacio Tower, Manila.

RSVP to the Roadshow is free, so if you want to score insights on Southeast Asian tech, and more—grab your tickets now!

Tickets are running out fast so visit the Echelon Roadshow 2019 Manila page here to find out more details!

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The cleantech company said the plan would be to use the funding to create smart hotels across Southeast Asia

Singapore-based smart energy management company SensorFlow has announced that it has secured US$2.7 million Series A funding from private investor Pierre Lorinet. Joining the round is Playfair Capital, Cocoon Capital, Entrepreneur First, 2be.lu Investments, Aurum Land, and Insitu Asia Holdings.

Also Read: ViSenze raises US$20M Series C funding round co-led by Gobi Partners, Sonae IM

The company said that it will use the funding to focus on accelerating regional growth to Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines, which will bring the company closer to its goal of 800,000 smart hotel rooms by 2022. Its mission is to support hotels across Asia with the efficiency of smart energy technology.

It also seeks to use the funding for an operation to meet the need of their hotel chain customers in Singapore, Indonesia, and Hong Kong.

“This investment has put us in an even stronger position for market expansion to help more hotels within the region reach their sustainability goals. We also have our eyes set on entering Sri Lanka, India, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia within the next two years,” said Co-founder and CEO of SensorFlow Saikrishnan Ranganathan.

SensorFlow offers a solution that solves three key challenges that used to prevent hoteliers from implementing effective, integrated energy management solutions. They are the large upfront costs for hardware followed by the inconvenience of a long installation period as well as the lack of integration options with existing systems.

SensorFlow records that energy consumption accounts for more than 60 percent of utility costs for the hotel business. The problems that hoteliers often face include the challenge of reducing energy use is high costs and disruptions when implementing new energy solutions.

“With SensorFlow, the solution provided can be installed in a matter of minutes and seamlessly integrates into existing infrastructure. Using wireless sensors, SensorFlow collects real-time data and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate decision-making without cost subscription model – catering to hotels that are unable or unwilling to tap into larger capital expenditure budgets,” explained Ranganathan.

SensorFlow’s track records include deploying property-wide solutions for The Uncharted Co’s 5footway.inn in Singapore and completing trials in three Alila Hotels & Resorts properties in Bali, managed to drive a 30 percent reduction in energy costs.

SensorFlow is on track with the findings from International Energy Agency, which stated that Southeast Asia’s energy demand is expected to grow by nearly 60 percent by 2040. With the building sector accounting for approximately 25 percent of Asia’s overall energy consumption, solutions provided by SensorFlow is expected to create more sustainable energy consumption.

Also Read: Singapore a honeypot for cryptocurrency and blockchain projects, data shows

The funding brings the total funds raised by SensorFlow to date to US$3.5 million. Last year’s initial seed funding was led by Cocoon Capital and followed by SG Innovate and SparkLabs under the Entrepreneur First accelerator programme.
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Image Credit: SensorFlow

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Also, Sony welcomes any ideas to finance, and Entrepreneur First closes US$115M for this year’s investment plan

Gobi Partners leads Series C funding for AI startup ViSenze [e27]

ViSenze, an AI company focussing on visual commerce technology serving retailers, brands, and media companies, announced a US$20M Series C funding it has received from Gobi Partners and Sonae IM. The latter is a Europe-based corporate venture investor specialising in retail, telco tech, and cybersecurity.

Other participants in the funding round include new investors Tembusu ICT Fund, 31Ventures Global Innovation Fund, and Jonathan Coon’s Impossible Ventures.

In a press statement, ViSenze said that it will use the funding to provide advanced, vertically-focused visual commerce technology to retailers, brands, and media companies. It’s also looking at enhancing its current platform solutions partnership with major smartphone manufacturers to enable visual shopping on native camera lenses.

Also Read: SensorFlow secures US$2.7M Series A funding from Pierre Lorinet

“Visuals have incredible power and influence over buying decisions, therefore having visual search capabilities within mobile devices delivers a modern, smarter way to ensure discovery by consumers,” said ViSenze Co-Founder and CEO Oliver Tan.

Prior to this funding round, the company that launched into operation in 2012 raised US$10.5 million in Series B funding round in 2016. It has raised a total of US$34.5 million with the latest funding round. ViSenze is run by over 80 employees with offices in Singapore, China, the United Kingdom, the United States, South Korea, and Japan.

Talent investor Entrepreneur First closes the first US$115M worth of global fund [Press Release]

Entrepreneur First (EF), a worldwide talent investor, announced today an investment worth US$115 million led by top institutional investors across the US, Europe and Asia. Some prominent entrepreneurs also took part in the fundraising, such as Taavet Hinrikus, founder of TransferWise, Alex Chesterman, founder of Zoopla, and EF alumnus Rob Bishop, who co-founded Magic Pony Technology which has been acquired by Twitter.

EF said that it will use the new fund to invest in over 2,200 individuals across the globe, who are joining cohorts in Bangalore, Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Singapore, and Paris.

EF’s bespoke program has been known for time and money with the aim to help individuals in finding co-founders and building high-growth technology companies from scratch. To date, EF has helped more than 1200 individuals to build over 200 technology companies, collectively worth USD 1.5 billion.

A lesser known fact about the investments EF has poured is that a quarter of Singapore’s seed capital in 2018 that went into Singapore companies came out of EF’s program.

Logistics tech startup Haulio launches a connectivity app for efficient tracking [Press Release]

Singapore-based logistics-tech startup Haulio just revealed the mobile-focused app called Haulio Connectivity System (HCS), that connects container haulage companies and drivers today, February 20, at their official launch. The app is said to be the industry’s first.

The app works by bridging clients and drivers across a single interface for enhanced data standardisation, efficiency in communication, and collaboration. The users can overall access visibility of drivers and trips, track job progress and fulfillment more easily, as well as reduce manual paperwork while the drivers can access an overview of their performance, trip incentives, and behaviour via their HCS dashboard.

In the event, there was also MoU signing between the company and Yang Kee Logistics to collaborate on integrating Haulio’s resource pooling and matching platform, HCP, with the Logistics Integrated Transport Ecosystem (LITE), which is a S$1.8 million (US$ ) project led by Yang Kee Logistics and supported by Enterprise Singapore,

The launch event was attended by Dr Lam Pin Min, Senior Minister of State for Transport and Health, and supported by PSA International (PSA), Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Workforce Singapore (WSG).

Sony Corp. welcomes any idea to support in its internal startup program [Bloomberg Tech]

Tokyo-based behemoth behind tech products like PlayStation, Sony, announced that it will open up an internal accelerator program to external entrepreneurs, backing them with money, marketing support, and more, as reported by Bloomberg. It will do so in a partnership with Tokyo University under which students can turn ideas into businesses.

Depending on the opportunity, Sony may invest, strike an alliance, provide office space, support the startups with its own marketing and sales expertise, or even acquire the businesses.

The initiative, now known as Sony Startup Accelerator Program, was started in 2014 and has seen some successful graduates such as smartwatches line wena, the digital smell dispenser Aromastic, and self-flying drone startup AeroSense.

“We’ll offer the know-how and the environment of our enterprise. Through these things, we want to realize the vision of creators,” said Shinji Odashima, head of Sony’s accelerator program. Sony welcomes application through its website to anyone.

Singapore-based social media platform Bigo to invest over US$100M for India expansion [Entrepreneur]

Bigo, Singapore-based social media platform, has announced an investment of over US$100 million to focus its expansion into India. It will also take steps to expand in the Middle East and the US, following the US$272 million Series D funding from Nasdaq-listed YY Inc it received in June last year, as reported by Entrepreneur.

It’s believed that Bigo will become the first Singaporean company to do so in India, possibly creating over 1,000 jobs and opportunities for cross-country learning for both Singaporeans and Indians.

Also Read: Singapore a honeypot for cryptocurrency and blockchain projects, data shows

“We have set our sights on expanding into India as the first region of three. India will act as a complementary center to Singapore’s Research and Development center,” said Jason Hu, CTO for Bigo Technology.

The company is known for its live-streaming product is BIGO LIVE, which has over 200 million registered users in more than 100 regions.
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We are now experiencing the dawn of a new era for funding blockchain startups via a more stable, regulated vehicle known as the Security Token

Capital raising is a method whereby a company raises funds through means of equity and debt.

The objectives of raising capital can be to inject it back into the business for further growth, paying the shareholders, and so on. The amount of capital to be raised is then decided accordingly.

All businesses ranging from startups to large enterprises are capable of raising capital through different means.

Before getting into how Blockchain can enable capital raising, let us first cover the Traditional Methods of Capital Raising and its limitations which can be tackled by blockchain technology.

We’ll also be looking at the basics of Blockchain, it’s applications and the current scene in the market.

Traditional capital-raising methods

1. IPO
Initial Public Offering is the very first sale of stock issued by a company to the public.

Prior to an IPO, the company is considered private, with a relatively small number of shareholders made up primarily of early investors (founders) and professional investors (such as venture capitalists or angel investors).

When a private company goes public, it faces a loss of control and changes in its organizational structure.

2. Short-term loans
These are generally made for a period of 1 year and have higher interests than Long-Term loans.

3. Long-term loans
These are generally made for a period of 5 to 10 years.

4. Bonds and debentures
A bond is typically a loan that is secured by a specific physical asset. A debenture is secured only by the issuer’s promise to pay the interest and loan principal.

All these methods require a credit history record of the borrower which might be a problem for new start-ups or people with no previous credit history.

Blockchain enabled capital-raising methods

Describing blockchain
Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology (DLT) which can be either public or private.

It is decentralized and all the information is digitized thus eliminating the need for manual documentation. This saves on labour costs as well as material cost.

In other words, blockchain is a chain of blocks in which information is stored within each block chronologically.

Furthermore, the records are updated near real-time and immutable.

To be more specific, this DLT is append-only ledger and remains unchanged over time. Changes to the existing block are created as a new block instead and linked to the old block.

The reason for this is that the blocks are cryptographically sealed in the chain thus creating True Digital Ownership due to the qualities of it being irreversible and auditable.

Auditability is possible by all parties with access to the system due to the transparency of records.

How it works:
Blockchain operates on a consensus mechanism (i.e. a protocol ensuring all nodes are synchronized with each other and transactions are approved as legitimate).

These consensus mechanisms are essential for Blockchain to operate smoothly.

• CPU Mining — Using a normal computer’s CPU to validate transactions in a proof of work consensus protocol.
• GPU Mining — This is not dissimilar to CPU mining, however, in this case, a graphics card is used. Graphics cards are more powerful whilst relatively using less electricity.
• Cloud Mining — Some miners rent out their processing power to other miners for an allotted period of time.

The two most popular mechanisms are:

Proof of work
This concept uses a process known as Mining and the nodes are known as Miners.

Mining requires massive computational power and in order to create a block, they will have to solve complex mathematical puzzles.

However, the drawback of this consensus mechanism is the massive resources it requires. To the graph available at digiconomist.net, estimates the amount of energy Bitcoin has consumed over the past 2 years.

Digiconomist estimates that just over the last year, Bitcoin consumed roughly 73.12 TWh, with an estimated cost of US$3,656,073,069. This figure is constantly updating and available under the label Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index.

Proof of stake
The basic assumption here is that “those who own most coins in a network have a vested interested in keeping the network maintained and the value of its coins high.”

Process:

1. Users can stake their tokens in order to be eligible to produce a block. (called a validator)
2. Those with most tokens have the highest chance to produce the block.
3. The validator receives the reward of transaction fees for each transaction made on their block.

Capital raising through blockchain

There are two main ways to raise capital through blockchain.

A) Initial Coin Offerings (ICO)
ICO is a fundraising mechanism through which investors are offered some units of a new cryptocurrency or crypto-token in exchange against cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

There is a difference between cryptocurrency and token.

A cryptocurrency coin, like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum etc. is independent of a platform. They can be used as a form of currency outside their native environment.

A token represents an asset or utility that a company has and they usually give it away to their investors during a public sale called ICO (Initial Coin Offering). OmiseGO, Golem etc. are examples of tokens which exist on a particular platform. (blockgeeks.com)

Crypto-tokens are special kind of virtual currency tokens that reside on their own blockchains and represent an asset or utility.

Initial Coin Offering is similar to the IPO mentioned above in the Traditional Capital Raising Methods.

Here is a typical step for an ICO:

Step 1: Pre-Announcement (on platforms as Bitcoin Forum, Reddit)
Step 2: Offer
Step 3: PR Campaign (through platforms as Twitter, Medium, Telegram)
Step 4: Crowdsale
Step 5: Trading on Exchanges.

Before the ICO, the company needs to prepare a whitepaper. A whitepaper is a persuasive, authoritative, in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem and provides a solution. (HubSpot)

Here’s an example of a successful ICO deal in the energy sector in February 2018.

WePower, a blockchain-based green energy trading platform, raised US$40 million during its ICO.

During its presale, WePower raised US$30 million — US$11 million of which came from a public presale round in October of 2017 and US19 million from strategic investors and funds. (Business Wire)

WePower platform connects energy buyers to the green energy producers and allows for purchasing energy upfront at below the market prices. It uses energy tokenization to simplify, standardize and globalize the current existing energy investment ecosystem.

How their ICO was structured:
WePower token model (WPR) was a reward based crowdfunding campaign where contributors will receive WPR tokens in return for their donations.

Soft cap: US$5 million
Exchange rate for token sale until the soft cap: 1 ETH – 4600 WPR
Exchange rate for token sale above the soft cap: 1ETH – 4000 WPR
Minimum investment amount: US$200 in ETH

This example of WePower demonstrates how it created its own crypto-token, WPR and valued it to be 1 ETH worth 4,600 WPR (until soft cap) tokenized energy through its platform.

• One energy token will represent 1 kWh of green energy that would be generated at a certain time in the future.
• Created value for renewable energy providers as they can pre-sell their production in the global market and gain the required capital to increase the project profitability.
• Created value for investors as they can enjoy the benefit of better investment terms and access the green energy projects across the globe in a standardized manner. (icotokenews.com, WePower)

The drawback of the ICO is that investors receive tokens that are essentially useless until the project makes good on what it has promised.

Uprising and downfall of ICOs
With 2017’s dramatic crypto price boom, there was a corresponding boom in ICOs.

The fund raised in ICO significantly increased in 2017.

All companies had to do was, present a whitepaper containing their business plan, and crypto-investors or speculators invested based on this. Their business could be completely fictitious too as with most ICO scams but due to lack of regulation, investors had to do their own due-diligence and were not protected.

Below is a figure on the total funds raised from January 2016 to November 2017.

An incredibly thorough research document of Bloomberg, published in July 2018, reports that around 78 per cent of ICOs were identified scams prior to trading.

The report further highlights that 70 per cent of ICO funding (by US$ volume) to that date went to higher quality projects, although over 80 per cent of projects (by the number of shares) were identified as scams.

The ICO market is facing a decline due to large amounts of scam. There are a few cases of proper ICO’s between the fourth quarter in 2017 and the second quarter in 2018, five companies raised more than US$200 million dollars in an ICO.

These include 1) EOS, 2) Telegram, 3) TaTaTu, 4) Dragon, and 5) Huobi.

It is important to note here that these projects were all high-profile. EOS’s ICO lasted for nearly a full year and Telegrams ICO was only for accredited investors.

So, these high-profile projects are considered as outliers and here’s a graph created by LongHash to reflect on the actual situation of ICO’s after removing the outliers.

To conclude this section about ICO’s, the ICO trend is decreasing as seen in the figure above.

Due to the lack of proper regulations, it has been banned in a few countries like China, Morocco, Bangladesh and is highly regulated in other countries.

Many governments are changing their regulations on ICO’s to protect the ordinary investor.

There are other safer and more accepted ways to raise capital in 2019 such as the security token offerings.

B) Security Token Offerings
Earlier we talked about the difference between cryptocurrency and tokens.

There are two types of tokens as defined by the US SEC and FINMA.

Firstly, Utility tokens derive their value by providing a product or service to the user which gives them the right to use the network. The primary intent for ownership of utility tokens is usage and not profit.

They are important because, in a democratic ecosystem, it’s crucial for people who cannot easily buy or trade in securities to be able to access the company’s services and platform. (cryptobriefing.com)

Also Read: Rock it out in tech startup fashion at the Echelon Roadshow 2019 Bangkok

Security tokens derive their value from an external, tradable asset and are subject to federal regulations. However, STOs can be structured under a few ‘exemptions’ from registration offered by the US Securities Act.

Considering the issuance of the token is exempted from needing to be registered with the SEC, then in order to qualify for this exemption, the STO needs to be performed with full compliance of US securities laws. These exemptions are as follows:

Regulation D
Regulation D is a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulation governing private placement exemptions. It allows smaller companies to raise capital through the sale of equity or debt securities without having to register their securities with the SEC.

Regulation A+
Regulation A is an exemption from registration requirements — instituted by the Securities Act — that apply to public offerings of securities that do not exceed US$5 million in any one-year period.

Companies utilizing the Regulation A exemption must still file offering statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). However, the companies utilizing the exemption are given distinct advantages over companies that must fully register.

The issuer of a Regulation A offering must give buyers documentation with the issue, similar to the prospectus of a registered offering.

Regulation S
This regulation implies that STO’s must “lock” tokens for a year before trading can commence.

The SEC has written “Equity securities placed offshore by domestic issuers under Regulation S will be classified as “restricted securities” within the meaning of Rule 144 so that resales without registration or an exemption from registration will be restricted for a one-year period.”

According to the Node Blockchains Inc. study, STOs hold a better potential for fundraising, as the tokens investors receive actually represent stakes in the company and its assets.

Security Token Offering is financial security issued in the form of a digital asset; which typically represent ownership rights in an underlying company and/or its assets. (investinblockchain.com)

STO is distinctly different from ICOs, which were ‘Utility Tokens’ or digital tokens that provided access to a project’s future product/service but no representative ownership claims to an asset or equity.

Few benefits of Security tokens are:

• They’re backed by assets, profits, or cash flows, and thus have an intrinsic value.
• STOs are fully compliant with regulatory frameworks, allowing investors from all over the world to participate without violating respective securities laws.
• They allow companies to create whitelists and blacklists, which make it easier to comply with know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money-laundering (AML) reporting requirements.

Timeline of an STO

Components of an STO

(1) Blockchain protocols (eg. Polymath)
Security Tokens are constructed on existing protocols with Ethereum being the most popular in the space currently. However, more protocols are entering the space.

(2) Smart contracts
They are programming languages set by the blockchain protocol. Ideally, they are supposed to have a utility and therefore a value which is why they are named utility tokens.

(3) Issuance platforms (eg. Polymath, Swarm)
Issuance platforms enable issuers to tokenize and issue their assets, making them available for sale.

These platforms offer tokenization features for a wide range of assets including real estate, debt, equity, and art. These are responsible for having compliant, regulated smart contracts for the token issuance.

Also Read: Is Echelon Roadshow 2019 Manila the startup scene’s own ‘Thrilla in Manila’?

(4) Exchanges/trading (eg. Templum)
They enable traders to buy and sell security tokens. These platforms can service both primary and secondary markets.

(5) Legal and compliance (eg. Securitize)
These offer services for security token issuers to stay consistent with current regulations. These include investor verification, know-your-customer rules, cap-table management, and fraud management.

Also follow the core regulations mentioned above — Reg D, Reg A+, and Reg S.

STO LANDSCAPE

Investments and trading take the lead with the greatest number of STO so far, contributing to over 20 per cent of total STOs. (Inwara)

Dual-token structure: utility tokens and security tokens
MintHealth, a crypto health solution.

About the company: MintHealth is a global, decentralized health platform that aligns healthcare stakeholders around the shared goal of patient empowerment and improved clinical outcomes, at lower costs.

In March 2018, MintHealth announced its funding strategy of issuing both a security and a utility token. MintHealth Vidamints (VIDA) will operate as the rewards and incentive system on the MintHealth platform where Patients will earn VIDA as a reward for completing healthy activities.

This utility token will not be used for raising capital.

The MintHealth Security Token (MHST) will be the first security token issued in healthcare representing equity ownership for token owners and will be configured using the Polymath platform. The legal and compliance will be embedded into the token itself using Polymath’s Security Token Standard Protocol, ST-20.

For secondary market trading, MHST will be listed on OpenFinance Network (OFN), a trading platform for tokenized securities.

Benefits to holders of MHST:
i) a 10 per cent royalty percentage of revenues generated through the sale of VIDA by MintHealth.
ii) equity ownership in MintHealth.

Conclusion

Raising capital through ICOs was popular in 2017 and peaked in early 2018 but as with any successful market, many new parties wanted to get involved and taste the success for themselves.

This welcomed many new ICO projects along with scams and soon the SEC and governments of involved countries started to take notice.

The role of the government is to protect financial investors, who were being trapped in ICO scams due to being unable to verify whether the project is legitimate or not.

Soon enough by the end of 2018, many countries such as China, Ecuador, Morocco had banned ICOs and many such as Japan and Malaysia are updating their regulations on ICOs. (bitcoinmarketjournal.com)

The reasons for the shutdown on ICO can be summed up as lack of investor legal protections, scam risks, technology risks (hackers, exchange shutdowns), lack of investor rights, liquidity risks and market manipulation risks.

We are now experiencing the dawn of a new era for funding blockchain startups via a more stable, regulated vehicle known as the Security Token.

Security Tokens are more reliable as their real value is in blockchain-based digital securities.

STOs will be legal and regulated for people to invest in them with a genuine expectation of returns.

Returns that aren’t influenced by the Bitcoin’s market price, but instead rely on the positive cash flow of a business, thus creating a healthy digital economic ecosystem.

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BlackBox Labs is an open innovation lab that enables enterprise commercial models powered by technology — with the ultimate goal of assembling a unified trade economy. We educate, consult and provide development services to support public and private organizations, corporates, investors and startups in their quest to invent, apply and disrupt new business models.

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In addition to the Jobs007 app, Singapore startup IoTalents also offers profiling technologies, algorithmic matching and talent mapping

When Kek Sei Wee and Eric Sng ran an IT company in Singapore a few years ago, they struggled to find suitable tech talents for a particular project. They knew there were many talented professionals in the market (both traditional employees and gig workers, with good technical skills acquired through experience and personal learning, but might lack the necessary certifications). But the duo didn’t know how to go about and discover these candidates.

They sat together and brainstormed, and came up with a solution. “We quickly realised we had complementary skills and similar ambitions to build a recruitment app for the Singapore market. This is how IoTalents took birth,” Sei Wee tells e27.

Started in 2015 by Sei Wee, Eric Sng, and Dr Michelle Chong, IoTalents is a recruitment and HR-tech startup. It is an online community and platform for hirers and IT workforce (employees, contract workers and virtual talents) to intelligently connect and transact.

IoTalents recently launched a referral-based jobs app Jobs007, through which talents are incentivised to refer their network to great jobs, and get rewarded with cash. Hirers are then able to leverage on these existing professional networks to select and hire curated referred talents.

“We deliver niche candidates in a prompt and professional fashion. We do so through a precise combination of data science and human judgement,” Sei Wee explains. “Apart from using our recruiter’s network, marketing, public relations, events and media efforts, we also rely on community building and referral-based mechanisms, like Jobs007, to grow our database and candidate pool.”

In addition to the app, IoTalents is also building profiling technologies, algorithmic matching and talent mapping. Such technologies are used in-house to augment its recruitment services, as well as the matching abilities of Jobs007.

“Our team is also passionate about the trend on the contingent workforce model (the gig economy) and believes that the exploding shared economy of global IT talents will reshape the workforce of the future,” Sei Wee adds.

Revenue model

IoTalents generates revenues through three offerings — marketplace, HR concierge, and technology.

The marketplace allows hirers to post job openings and project assignments of quality tech professionals. Through this, they can hire the right talents for their in-house roles or outsourced projects.

Also Read: This Singaporean app wants to make job hunting like Tinder

The HR Concierge, on the other hand, provides value-added staffing and search services to clients. This, claims the founders, helps clients source for the best technology talents across a wide range of technologies, covering both permanent placements and contract placements. The clients range from startups to large enterprise level firms in the tech sector in Singapore. It charges clients a placement fee upon successful placement of a job candidate.

“Our proprietary talent analytics technology, Talenlytics, aims to solve the biggest frustrations and challenges in recruitment today. Objective data are used to match candidates to jobs, increasing the statistical odds of matching the right job to the right talent with the appropriate values and skill-set. Talenlytics’s matching prowess is powered by our use of data science and Artificial Intelligence,” he boasts.

While IoTalents primarily focuses on IT and tech professionals, it also covers other PMET job roles, says Sei Wee.

Massive opportunities

The recruitment market size for “staffing” is estimated at about S$1.4 billion (US$1 billion) in the city-state. Leading companies are HRnet, Kelly Services, Adecco, Energy Resourcing Singapore, and Air Energi Group.

“Flexible staffing arrangements using temporary and contractual workers are becoming increasingly popular in Singapore. Moreover, this trend is only likely to grow as employers are struggling to find the skilled individuals they need in the face of tight labour markets and the government’s policies on hiring foreigners,” he states.

With Singapore the primary focus market, IoTalents also has plans to expand into other regional markets in Southeast Asia, starting with Indonesia.

Convincing a big challenge

According to the founders, in the initial period, convincing and educating customers on adopting newer, alternative methods, technologies and market access (freelance talent pool) for their talent acquisition/hiring needs was a major challenge for the company. Many are still more comfortable with the traditional way of doing things.

Also Read: Blockchain-powered recruiting startup SpringRole not only weeds out fake profiles, but also rewards users

“The biggest challenge still remains to be educating mindsets of our products/service buyers, and also the very tight labour market in Singapore. For the recruitment space, it is important to have methods to gain market access to talents, before we can even talk about intelligent matching and assessments. No matter how good your matching technologies are, it will be for naught if there is no candidate pool. This is why we launched Jobs007,” he discloses.

Bootstrapped so far, IoTalents last year closed a pre-Series A round of funding from a group of angel investors. The startup is currently in talks to raise more money for the next phase of growth.

Sei Wee admits that the journey has been tough. It has never been easy from the get go, and like any other startup, IoTalents has also been through its share of ups and downs. “But we are very proud. We have created an environment that works. Our team has great spirits, a strong mindset, and self-belief which we strongly believe will get us there.”

The post Refer your friends to great jobs on this app and get cash rewards appeared first on e27.

SeedPlus leads the funding round for BlockPunk, which aims to make anime merchandise more accessible to fans

Singapore-based anime tech startup BlockPunk today announced a S$1.3 million (US$957,000) seed funding round led by seed-stage venture firm SeedPlus.

The round was joined by SGInnovate, Hustle Fund, Entrepreneur First and Japanese printing giant Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd with whom the startup has a strategic partnership.

In a press statement, the startup said that the funds will be used to expand its engineering team and develop product.

BlockPunk is a platform that enables creators to turn their digital artwork into “scarce” collectible merchandise.

The platform uses blockchain to create proof of authenticity and a new source of income for creators.

Also Read: This blockchain startup empowers creators to fund, merchandise and stream their content directly to fans

It was founded with the mission to make anime merchandises more accessible to global fans.

“Anime merchandise supply is broken. Fans want to consume merchandise globally as soon as the anime is streamed online but merchandise is rarely available due to fragmentation and supply chain issues. Unlicensed products have become the norm to match this demand. Our solution allows any creator to instantly create official collectible merchandise that is available worldwide,” said BlockPunk co-founder Julian Lai-Hung.

“With our strategic partnership with Dai Nippon Printing, a US$14 billion revenue world leader in printing technologies, we will extend our technology to physical merchandise in addition to digital,” he continued.

Co-Founders Julian Lai-Hung was the former head of anime at Netflix while Jatin Shah has a Yale PhD in computer science and was a product manager at LinkedIn.

By far, content creators such as Ishimori Pro (Cyborg009), Kazuto Nakazawa (Kill Bill, B the Beginning) and Zunda Horizon (Tohoku Zunko) are already live in the platform with more in the pipeline.

Also Read: Singapore’s video-based social media platform Bigo raises US$272M led by China’s YY

SeedPlus Managing Partner Michael Smith said that the firm is interested in investing in BlockPunk as it enables “new level of transparency” as well as “efficiency in protecting creator and owner IP rights.”

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Image Credit: BlockPunk

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